Anna Moffo 1932 - 2006

Soprano was star at Met

Opera star had U.S. debut at Lyric

career could be seen as cautionary tale

March 12, 2006|By New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — Anna Moffo, an American soprano who was beloved for her rosy voice, dramatic vulnerability and exceptional beauty, died Thursday night at a New York hospital. She was 73 and lived in New York.

She died of a stroke after grappling with complications of breast cancer for 10 years, said a stepdaughter, Rosita Sarnoff.

Though Ms. Moffo's career began splendidly, her voice had declined by her late 30s. With her radiant appearance, she was drawn early on into television and film, playing host of her own variety show on Italian television for many years.

She might not have fulfilled her promise, but for a good dozen years Ms. Moffo enjoyed enormous success and won a devoted following at a time when her competition for roles like Verdi's Violetta, Puccini's Mimi and Donizetti's Lucia included Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi and Joan Sutherland.

Though Ms. Moffo's voice was not large, it was warm and rich, with soft pastel colorings and a velvety lower range. Agile coloratura technique allowed her to sing high soprano bel canto repertory impressively, especially "Lucia di Lammermoor." She was a thoroughly trained musician, having studied the piano and viola when she was a voice major on scholarship at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

As Susanna on the classic 1959 EMI recording of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," Ms. Moffo holds her own and then some in scenes with the intimidating soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who sings the Countess. Her RCA recording of "La Traviata," with Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill, is still prized for the subtlety and pathos she brings to her portrayal of Violetta. Still, her career could be seen as a cautionary tale about doing too much too soon.

Anna Moffo was born in Wayne, Pa., to an Italian-American shoemaker and his wife in 1932. In 1954 she entered and won the Philadelphia Orchestra Young Artists Auditions. Awarded a Fulbright fellowship, she went to Rome to study voice, master the Italian language and train for opera.

Ms. Moffo made her stage opera debut in 1955 as Norina in Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" in Spoleto. Her big breakthrough came the next year, when she starred in a television production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," directed by Mario Lanfranchi, a producer for RCA Victor and RAI. She and Lanfranchi married in 1957.

Ms. Moffo made her U.S. debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1957 as Mimi in Puccini's "La Boheme," then had her Met debut on Nov. 14, 1959, in the role of Violetta in Verdi's "La Traviata."

The reviews of her Met debut, though encouraging, were cautious. The New York Times critic Harold Schonberg wrote that her singing needed "a little more personality."

Ms. Moffo soon became a favorite at the Met, and remained so well into the 1960s. She appeared some 200 times with the company, including her portrayal of Liu in the legendary production of Puccini's "Turandot" in 1961 that starred Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli.

By the late 1960s, her voice was often unreliable. In his book "The American Opera Singer," critic Peter Davis writes of a now infamous 1969 Saturday afternoon broadcast of "Lucia" at the Met. Rudolf Bing, the general manager, was so dismayed by her singing that he considered stopping the performance before Lucia's daunting "mad scene" was broadcast to millions.

That same year, Ms. Moffo caused a scandal in Italy when she appeared to be nude in a scene in the film "Una Storia d'Amore." In later years she insisted that she had not been totally unclothed.

In 1972 she and Lanfranchi divorced. Two years later she married Robert Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA. Under Sarnoff, RCA built a promotional campaign around her, including an ill-advised recording of Massenet's "Thais," with Ms. Moffo in the title role.

Besides her stepdaughter Rosita, Ms. Moffo is survived by a brother and two other stepdaughters.